New teacher profiles

From academia and law to teaching physics to city students Ben Mikesh, a fourth-year teacher is happily firing off cannonballs — as part of a physics demonstration — in his Manhattan classroom at Bard HS Early College and is really, really excited about the Higgs boson fundamental particle.

“The really fun thing about teaching is when your students come to you excited about something and want to discuss it without your having to bring it up,” said Tom Wilkens, in his first year as a full-time teacher. It helps when the subject matter is nothing less dramatic than earthquakes and tsunamis, which fascinate his students.

“Trying to keep 7th-graders interested in ‘Of Mice and Men’ can be difficult when what they’re really interested in is the girl walking by with a hall pass outside the classroom door,” says English teacher Mike Amari. Call it the Zen of teaching adolescents — trying to win their minds while their heads are all over the place — “It’s something you learn to work with,” Amari says.

Everyone in the audience at the class play was amazed when a certain little girl said her lines in “Old MacDonald’s Farm.” The child was diagnosed as “selectively mute” on her Individualized Education Program. Indeed, she hardly spoke. So when the 2nd-grader walked to the stage and said, “We are the pigs, we play in the mud and we are very pink,” it was a triumph for the silent, timid child and for her teacher.

In teacher Jessica Remboulis’ classroom, prime factorization rocks. As math teachers know, breaking down a composite number to its prime is best done by creating a diagram of branches splitting off into smaller branches of smaller numbers, a visual tool called a factor tree.

They’re at that stage when they’re into writing poems and are dying to stay out all night at a cool downtown poetry cafe, but can’t because they’re only in 9th grade. So Elizabeth Carmichael brings the poetry cafe to them.

She loves the innocent, inquisitive energy of kindergarteners — and she loves the intense, roiling energy of rallies, political campaigns and election night. She’s proud that she has a positive impact on children’s lives — and is steamed at how negatively the media portrays teachers. Like any new teacher, Ashley Alvarado wishes there were more hours in a day to get everything done — yet she makes the time to serve as a UFT delegate.

He used to be the guy with the clipboard by the velvet ropes deciding whether you were thin enough, gorgeous enough and rich enough to get through the hallowed doors of Manhattan’s hottest clubs. “My job was to do everything to keep people out. Now my job is to get everyone involved and drawn in,” said Phil Grubler.

He traded in his partnership at a Brooklyn garage for teaching automotive shop at Ralph R. McKee Career and Technical HS on Staten Island.